


Walk-in Closet

by MouseBouse



Category: The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Interior Design, M/M, Post-COHF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MouseBouse/pseuds/MouseBouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Magnus, what… What did you <em>do</em>?”<br/>“Why do you assume this was <em>my</em> fault?”<br/>“Because I wasn’t home and the Chairman is a cat.”</p>
<p>In which Alec and Magnus need more closet space and Alec <em>will not</em> sacrifice their bedroom to get it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walk-in Closet

**Author's Note:**

> [Of_dreamdust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_dreamdust) started talking about glitter and I went into an 'imagine Magnus's wardrobe' monologue and... 
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr](https://mousebouse.tumblr.com)!

Chairman Meow hissed at the thump followed by a loud “By the Angel! Fuck! Mag-NUS!!“ 

“Are you okay, darling?” Magnus poked his head around the doorframe to the master bedroom to see Alec jumping on one foot, his hand holding the other, face scrunched up in pain. Stubbing your toe hurt even if you were a demon-slaying badass.

“Why the hell is the bed this close to the door?” Alec asked through his teeth as he threw himself face-first onto the gold and red quilt, his foot throbbing. It was true. Magnus’s, or, well, their, king size bed, which was usually in the center of the room, was now only a foot from the door. Technically, it _was_ still in the center, but the room seemed to have shrunk. _Really_ shrunk.

“I had to expand the wardrobe now that you officially live here.”

“Magnus, I don’t exactly have that much clothing. Besides, couldn’t you just have expanded the wardrobe to the other side?” Alec mumbled into the bed.

“That would be ridiculous, Alexander. Anyone with the Sight could look up from the street and see half a room floating in mid-air,” Magnus said exasperatedly, looking at the Shadowhunter as if he were completely out of his mind. “And you’ve been dressing much better lately, which I take full credit for, so you might need extra wardrobe space soon.”

“Well, do we really need _three_ guest bedrooms? Why don’t we turn one of them into a walk-in closet?”

“I would spend a lot of time in there, I am _not_ calling it a closet,” Magnus responded, smiling at his boyfriend who was now pushing himself up into a standing position.

“As someone who’s spent eighteen years in one, I can understand that. But I still want a regular-sized bedroom,” Alec said decisively as he walked past Magnus and into the living room, limping slightly, and Magnus could see that a bit of redecorating was in order.

***

A few days later, Alec came home from a mission drenched in sweat, his shirt torn in several places and a healing rune already on his arm. A Behemoth demon had shown up in the middle of Central Park and killed two faeries. The Fair Folk weren’t in the Clave’s graces these days, but New York City was in the Institute’s, so the Lightwood siblings had gone out to take care of it. Now, Alec’s mind was set on a quick shower and a good night’s sleep. Opening the door, however, he could see that that was not going to happen. Sparks were flying from the direction of the bedrooms and the Chairman ran to him and hid behind his legs, meowing loudly as if begging for help. 

Alec moved further into the loft and saw… well, a disaster, frankly. There was Magnus, in the middle of one of the spare bedrooms, the one that Clary had once used briefly. He was waving his hands, blue sparks flowing out of his fingers and all around the room, and any other day, Alec would’ve been content just watching his boyfriend work his magic, quite literally, but now he was distracted by the rest of the room. The floor was covered in several different colors of glitter, one of the orange walls was speckled with no less than eight nail polish shades, and the view of the other three walls was obscured by clothes racks where almost all their stuff was hung in seemingly no order whatsoever. Alec could see three of Magnus’s shirts followed by two pairs of skinny jeans, then a few of Alec’s T-shirts, then a pink satin dressing gown which wasn’t his but he did occasionally like to wear, then... _Literally_ no order whatsoever, Alec amended his previous thought.

“Alec! You have to help me, fashion turned against me!” Magnus yelled just as a pair of leather pants fell from the ceiling (What were those even _doing_ up there? Alec wondered). “The gods of interior design are conspiring to kill me!”

“Pretty sure those don’t exist,” Alec muttered as he carefully stepped into the room, grabbing Magnus by the wrist and pulling him out into the hallway. Magnus stumbled toward him from the force and Alec smashed into the wall, hissing as a semi-healed cut from earlier split open from the impact. The clothes that were previously floating in the air now all fell at once, creating a scene resembling the aftermath of a Black Friday sale. 

“Magnus, what… What did you _do_?” Alec asked, risking a glance into the room.

“Why do you assume this was _my_ fault?” 

“Because I wasn’t home and the Chairman is a cat,” Alec said, rolling his eyes. “Also, I literally just pulled you out of the room where you were… whatever it was you were trying to do.”

“I was redecorating because _someone_ said they wanted a new walk-in, and then my magic got a bit out of hand.”

“I appreciate the thought, but that wasn’t redecorating, that was demolishing. What’s with the glitter and the polish? And the lack of order of the clothes?”

“Glitter makes everything better, darling. As for the garments, you know I can use magic to get whichever ones we need without having to look for them, so it doesn’t really matter how they’re placed. The polish _was_ an accident, I’ll admit.”

Alec took a deep breath, and then slowly, quietly, said, “Magnus. Tomorrow you will pack a bag and scatter out of the apartment for the weekend. When you come back, this room will be the best walk-in clo---wardrobe you’ve ever seen. And you will never, ever, use magic in it again. Deal?”

“And if it’s not the best I’ve ever seen?” Magnus inquired with a smirk. 

“Down, boy. It will be,” Alec said and leaned in for a kiss. 

***

True to his word, the next day Alec pushed Magnus out of the door, having previously called Catarina to ask if she could take his boyfriend in for a couple of days. Chairman Meow was napping on the living room couch and Alec petted him as he pulled his phone out to make one more call. 

After the catastrophe of last night, Alec made Magnus remove everything from the spare bedroom, leaving it now completely empty, the walls still a bright orange, and with a few drops of a deep red polish on the floor. 

Soon, Isabelle arrived, pulling Jace in behind her, confusion clear on his face.

“Okay, Izzy, we’re here, you can let me go now. Also. _Why_ are we here?”

Alec led them to the room before replying, “I need you to paint these walls. I’m thinking two turquoise and two umber. Those colors look good together.” He ignored his siblings’ surprised looks at his new-found ability to both understand the concept of matching and know precise names of colors instead of just ‘blue’ and ‘brown’. “But first we need to put in new carpeting and put a drywall right about,” he walked about three quarters of the way into the room, “here.” 

Jace raised an eyebrow, “And we’re doing all of this, why?”

“Because I don’t want my bedroom to be smaller than the Chairman’s.”

“The cat has its own bedroom?” Izzy asked.

“Not important. Iz, I need you to go through Magnus’s makeup and separate it by, what do you call it, function? And then by color. Feel free to take anything you like, he probably won’t even notice it missing,” Alec smiled fondly at the thought of his warlock.

***

Six hours, one snack- and two bathroom-breaks, four iratzes, and precisely one hundred and twenty six curses later, a new white carpet stretched across the entire room, the drywall now in place, separating the front, which would later be the wardrobe, from the back part, which was a surprise Alec had planned for Magnus. There wasn’t a door between the newly divided rooms, just an archway in the drywall. It had actually been Jace’s idea, and both Izzy and Alec had been surprised when he’d started showing enthusiasm and a concerning amount of knowledge of interior design.

Jace and Alec were currently lying on the living room floor, both exhausted from the work. Fighting demons, stopping psychotic Shadowhunters from ending the world, finding a way home from demon dimensions, that they could do. This kind of manual labor was most definitely _not_ their thing.

Still, Alec was happy with what they’d done. They’d agreed to take a break before moving onto painting the walls, and while they were resting, Izzy, who had by that point finished organizing the makeup, “not just by function and color, dear brother, but also by cosmetic company,” had gone out to buy the paint.

She was back now, with freshly mixed turquoise and umber paint for the first, and black for the second room.

“Alright boys, I assume you can take care of this? I need to go through the ridiculous amount of nail polish bottles I saw under the bathroom sink.” She didn’t wait for an answer, already halfway down the hall. 

Alec called after her, “Those are just the ones that he doesn’t use often. The important ones are in the back of our current wardrobe. The red box, not the black. _Don’t_ touch the black one!”

***

It was close to 2am when they were finally done for the day. Isabelle had retired to the hot-pink room she was starting to think of as her own; that was where she’d slept the few times she’d stayed over. Jace took the remaining guest room, and Chairman Meow went with him, hoping for some late night petting.

Alec was standing in the smaller part of the room now, looking at the black walls and the two mirrors that stretched across the far wall. The small window between them looked out on a diner, but Alec assumed Magnus would magic the view into something nicer, since he will, hopefully, be spending a lot of time in this particular room. Around the mirrors they’d put in several light bulbs which cast a bright white glow over the entire room, and there was a white vanity table with a matching egg chair in front of each of them. Izzy had said it looked like they were backstage at New York Fashion Week, whatever that meant. 

He walked through the archway and cast a look around the soon-to-be-wardrobe. On both sides of the arch there were shelves awaiting to be filled with shoes. Well, the ones on Magnus’s side, anyway. The ones on Alec’s would be mostly empty. Who needs more than three pairs of shoes? The answer was ‘his boyfriend,’ apparently. The rest of the room was still eerily empty, but that would change soon. 

Alec closed the door on his way out, and went to the master bedroom, barely avoiding stubbing his toe again. He couldn’t wait for Magnus to magic this room back into its previous state. Maybe they could discuss changing the gold quilt, too. Silver would fit in much better with the rest of the room. Okay, he was getting way too into this whole matching thing.

***

The next day passed in a frenzy of “That goes to the other side, damn it, Jace,” and “Alec, do you want the seraph blades on the left or right?” and soon Alec was hugging Izzy and Jace goodbye and thanking them for about the billionth time for the help. Jace said he was now owed at least the same amount of help if (when) Clary started getting design ideas. Izzy just made her brother promise her a best woman spot at their wedding because “That room will make Magnus propose on the spot, I swear!”

Just as they left, his phone buzzed. He opened it to see a text from Magnus. **Be back in 20, darling.**

Perfect, Alec thought as he scribbled down a quick note on a nearby post-it.

***

Magnus entered the apartment to see Charmain Meow sitting next to the door, waiting patiently for him. He bent to pet the cat and saw a post-it note on his back. **The Chairman will show you to the CLOSET** was written in his boyfriend’s handwriting, and Magnus couldn’t help but smile as he said, “Okay, then, lead the way” to the feline who meowed in response and turned to trot down the hallway. He stopped in front of the double door to what used to be a guest room. Magnus pushed it open and heard his breath hitch.

The room was… _beautiful_. The side walls were an earthly color, the furniture placed almost symmetrically. On the far wall he could see an archway leading into a separate space, but that would have to wait for now. On either side of it were shoes, his on the left, Alec’s on the right. Near the middle of the room, moved just slightly to each side, so as not to disrupt the path, were two triple-panel full length mirrors. 

On the turquoise wall left of the door was a nail polish rack, the shades arranged with such precision he had to suspect Alec hadn’t been the only Lightwood involved in this project. Underneath it was a white vanity table that reminded him of one he’d seen in London long ago, in another Institute he’d been welcome in. He smiled a bit sadly as he thought of the people he’d known there, only two of whom were still around. His smile turned happy soon, though, as he noticed a framed photo of him and Alec standing in front of the Eiffel Tower on the table. He looked up to the side wall and saw a jewelry rack going almost floor-to-ceiling, with his rings taking up most of the space on it. This was not organized by color, he noticed absentmindedly, but rather by age. How could Alexander have known what time period the jewelry was from? He tossed another look toward the vanity that, on second thought, was _exactly_ like Tessa’s had been, and thought that maybe he knew the answer after all. 

Next came the clothing rack, stretching from the jewelry almost all the way down the wall, stopping only to make way for a cabinet Magnus assumed would contain his pants, as those were nowhere to be seen as of yet. On the rack were his shirts, all meticulously sorted, T-shirts first, with the ‘Blink if you want me’ one leading the way. Next came the all-colorful assortment of his shirts and blouses, followed by blazers and jackets. Last were the dressing gowns, although he could already see that his favorite pink one was missing. He smirked as he thought about where it most definitely was. Underneath the shirts was a white dresser, which upon inspection turned out to contain underwear, socks, pajamas and the like.

He turned to the other side of the room to find an identical arrangement filled with Alec’s clothing. Most of it was black, the Shadowhunters’ primary color, but there was something pink hanging at the end there. 

The parts of the walls that were designated for jewelry and nails on Magnus’s side had a slightly different purpose on Alec’s. Magnus came closer, fascinated by the beauty of the seraph blades, bows, arrows, and steles that he knew were all placed in their respective places with great care and respect. He ran a hand across a few of them before turning to walk across the room and through the archway, curious to see what else his Shadowhunter had done.

***

A gasp escaped his lips, closely followed by a call to an angel he had nothing to do with, but whose name he’d heard called so often he’d accidentally picked up the habit.

The walls were black, but the room was bright, being lit by white lights framing the two mirrors next to the window. The tables were free of clutter, and each drawer had a small inscription. Magnus’s eyes glanced over them: **makeup brushes** , **hair brushes** , **hairspray/hair gel** … A black vase was on one of them, with fresh yellow tulips poking out of it. With a snap of his fingers, Magnus made sure they would stay alive for a long time.

He turned his back to the window then, and looked at the shelves around the arch. From top to bottom he could see all his makeup perfectly sorted: eyeshadows on one shelf, eyeliners and mascaras on the next, then lipsticks, then lip pencils and lip glosses. Further down the wall he saw blushes, concealers, foundations, everything in its place.

The first side wall almost made him squeal with excitement. On it was all his glittery makeup, sorted in the same way as the rest of it had been on the other wall, but somehow he preferred this one. _Glitter makes everything better_ , he remembered his own words from a few days ago. That was probably it. 

He turned to look at the last wall and this time he did squeal. Were those… they _were_! Boxes, literal boxes of glitter filled the shelves, blue and green and gold and pink and… 

“Thought you might like it,” a familiar voice said, and Magnus turned wide-eyed to look at Alec leaning against the archway, smirking. 

“You were right. It’s the best walk-in closet I’ve ever seen. And this--- this is just…” Magnus was at a loss for words.

“Izzy and Jace helped, obviously, but this room was my idea.”

“Why?” Magnus asked, genuinely confused. 

Alec returned the look of confusion. “What do you mean, why?”

“I mean, why would you spend so much time on this, for me?”

Alec smiled, “You just answered your own question.”

***

Later, when they were lying in bed, after a lot of kissing and even more ‘thank you’s, just as the Shadowhunter’s eyes started to drop, Magnus spoke.

“I have a question. Why wasn’t my green eyeliner with the rest of them?” He paused for a beat before adding, “Actually, I feel like there was _a lot_ of my makeup missing. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“I warned Izzy not to steal anything,” Alec replied. The ‘I told her she could just take it’ went unsaid.

“Uh-huh,” the warlock mumbled and snapped his fingers.

Soon, Alec’s phone would vibrate with a text from his sister, but he would already be in deep sleep, hidden underneath their new silver covers.

**There’s glitter all over my room and ALL my makeup’s gone!**


End file.
